Embers and Envelopes
by GermanSparkleBunny
Summary: After breaking free of Esset, the members of Schwarz have scattered and moved on to new lives. Five years later, however, Schuldig sets out on a mission to reunite with his former leader and sets in motion a cascade of events not even Crawford could have foreseen.
1. Chapter 1

{Embers and Envelopes}

By Eimi and Ren

Authors Notes: Ignores the events of the drama CDs and Gluhen.

Dedication: To Eimi, my Disney princess, my lighthouse, my pythia, my reason for reason, the step in my groove. You're the bee's knees. Love, Ren.

/

"I know to have something like this broken is hard to fix."{MAE – "Embers and Envelopes"}

"It isn't necessary to imagine the world ending in fire or ice. There are two other possibilities: one is paperwork, and the other is nostalgia." - Frank Zappa

/

[Part 1]

Sometimes, late at night, when the rest of the sane world was asleep, he would sneak out into the study and write. And maybe that in itself would not be so strange, but he wasn't working on a novel or poetry or anything like that. He would sit down at his desk and write letters. And writing letters would also not be so bad if he had any intention to send them, but he did not.

That was exactly what he was up to, doing just like he did on nights like tonight, when insomnia and nostalgia got the best of him. With pen in hand, he stared at the writing pad as if waiting for it to tell him what to write. Eventually, it did.

[I don't even know why I'm writing this, because I know you'll never read it. Even if I could bring myself to send it, I wouldn't even know where to send it to. I've tried a few times to find you, but it looks like you don't want to be found. So you can't blame me for not trying. It hurts me a little that you haven't tried to find me, at least not that I know of. But I digress. That's not really what I want to say to you.

If I could tell you anything, I would tell you that you were right. Yes, I would say that, and I'm sure I would never hear the end of it.

I'm doing well.

You probably wouldn't recognize me. I cut my hair and wear a suit to work, if you can believe that. I guess you could say I grew up to be like you. Did you see it coming? It would explain a lot of things. I work for a consulting firm. I always seem to know just what the clients want, and my boss is impressed, to say the least. He just doesn't know how I do it. No one does. But you do.

I'm getting married. She's a nice girl. That's all there is to say about her. I used to peer into her mind at first, but I stopped. Not because I care about her, but because she's terribly boring. Nice girls usually are. She's the niece or something of someone important. My boss introduced us. He said something to the affect that it's a shame that I'm not already married at my age, and what's more, if things went well between us, it would be good for business. Of course I don't want to marry her. It's not that I don't love her, though that's true, it's just that I would rather be alone. Alone with my thoughts, and the thoughts of others. But, what's good for business is what's good for me. I'm a man after my own interests, after all. Don't say you never taught me anything.

I don't suppose you've heard from Nagi, have you? I'm sure he would have told me if he knew where you are. We talked a bit a while ago. He invited me to use Facebook, or twitter, or one of those things, but I don't keep up with stuff on the internet. It's not my style. "Stuck in the 90's," I get a lot. But those were good times. Anyway, I guess Nagi is in university. Still, or again, whichever. He must be a rocket surgeon or something by now. Whatever he's doing, it sounds like he's happy. I think you would be proud of him. Maybe he'll get a Nobel Prize someday, but then again, foreseeing that is your territory, not mine. And in speaking of being happy, I hear Farfarello has found peace as well. At a monastery. In Tibet. You really never know. Well, I guess sometimes, you do.

That's basically it.

Until next time, or never,

(and I feel so silly writing this,)

"Schuldig" ]

The next part of the ritual was to shred the damning evidence and unceremoniously toss it in the waste bin. "You're an idiot," he muttered to himself, taking up his pen again.

[Fuck you Crawford and the horse you rode in on,] he scrawled, smirking. That was more like it, and more like him. [and fuck you for letting me leave.] This page too was then ripped up and thrown away.

"Fuck it," he mumbled, and jotted something down on the fresh page. He tore it off of the pad, but instead of throwing it away, he set it aside.

The first thing to do was reserve his flight, and then he'd e-mail his boss. He packed lightly for his trip, placed the note on his desk where it would be noticed, and was gone just like that.

The note on his desk read:

[Elise,

I quit my job. The wedding is off. Sorry. Just can't do this.]

By morning, he'd be on his way to somewhere halfway around the world, with no idea what to do once he got there.

/

"Now you can't await your own arrival. You've 20 seconds to comply." {Frou Frou – "Let Go"}


	2. Chapter 2

"All of my memories keep you near..." {Within Temptations – "Memories"}

/

[Part 2]

After a long, pulverising day in the shipyard, the most he wanted to do was heat up something out of a box and crawl into bed to die for a while. This had been his habit every night for the last five years, using the physical labour as a way to pound the memories from his head. It never worked for long, because he'd never mastered the trick of turning off his gift. After so long spent looking after them, his mind kept tabs on his former team as a matter of habit. He knew Farfarello was doing well, and kept tabs on Nagi from afar, but the fourth and final member of his former team was someone he actively tried to keep from his mind.

Before he'd ever set physical eyes on the young man with the flaming red hair, he'd known their lives would be intertwined like vines climbing a trellis, but he'd never reckoned on the cost to himself. Disbanding Schwarz and sending them in separate directions had been his last futile act to give them the kind of lives they deserved, but sometimes he missed them all so fiercely it was an ache in his chest.

And despite the effort he put into keeping Schuldig far from his waking thoughts, his dreaming mind brought him back night after night.

Lying in bed, sleepless and staring sightlessly at the cracked, grimy ceiling above him, he Saw Schuldig in his mind again, sitting down at a cluttered desk. Passing from wakefulness into sleep, the vision continued as if a dream. He could see the wild shock of red hair - tamed now, cropped close and short but still echoing the faint air of chaos. He could see the lines at the corner of vivid blue eyes, a testament to the years taking their toll. Laugh lines, smirk lines, crows feet, he wondered when his former partner had developed the visible signs that he was living. Bits of the steno pad were visible as Schuldig wrote, and the vision/dream faded in and out of clarity.

[I don't even know... hurts a little...That's not really what I want to say to you...]

He flinched inwardly, and struggled to rise from the clutch of sleep that held him. Without knowing if he was awake or unconscious, the vision continued relentlessly. The untidy scrawl he remembered had somehow transformed itself into neat penmanship, letters forming in tidy strokes. He wished he could see Schuldig again, ask if he knew how dignified and mature he looked now - almost like Crawford himself, actually, which was a laugh riot considering he'd shed the unruffled businessman look with his name. His coworkers at the docks knew him as Jordan Moore, and the firehouse men, when he chose to show up and volunteer his help, called him Tyler Fairbanks. Another line of handwriting, barely recognisable, spread across the page in the wake of Schuldig's hand.

[...suppose you've heard from Nagi, have...those were good times... He must be a rocket surgeon...]

He laughed, and realised he was awake again. Concentrating, he could see the cracked ceiling again, faint through the vision that held him fast.

[You really never know. Well, I guess sometimes, you do. Fuck you Crawford and the horse you rode in on...]

/Ah, Schuldig,/ he thought. /You never really change. The years may pass but you remain the same./

He could see the pages being torn away, and tossed into the rubbish bin. The vision wavered, and the thought it was about to collapse. Schuldig was the only one he ever Saw with such clarity anymore, and he could feel his mental muscles straining under the weight of the unfamiliar length of the vision. He saw Schuldig again, looking fierce and contemplative. Since he'd once accused the younger man of not having a single thought of his own in his head, it was a pleasantly unpleasant surprise to see the thoughtful cast to his features. The pad flashed across his mind's eye one last time, and the vision faded. Crawford found himself thrust back into his tiny, three-room apartment, the walls of reality nearly throbbing with their presence. He sucked in a shuddering gasp of air, and rolled out of bed, making his unsteady way across the squalid flat to the yellowed fridge. Yanking the door open so hard he nearly took it off the cheap plastic hinges, he snatched up a bottle of whisky and didn't even bother with a glass. Sitting at the three-legged card table that served as his dining table, he lifted the bottle to the air.

[I'm getting married. She's a nice girl. That's all there is...]

Married.

"To a long and fruitful life," Crawford toasted, and drank. He knew that setting them free to pursue their own lives would break the bonds of brotherhood that had held them for so long, but he'd always imagined a happier reunion. /Maybe I should send him a letter,/ he decided. /So he'll know where to send the invitation./

Then he realised he didn't even know what Schuldig's current address was. Nagi probably would, he decided, and after a healthy swallow of the whisky, he set it back in the fridge and collected his dust-covered laptop from its home beside the sagging couch. As it whined into gurgling life, he reflected on the myriad twists and turns their lives had taken. Farfarello content with a pious life high in the mountains, Nagi working on his PhD. Schuldig a respected businessman, and here he was, in a broken-down flat that shook when the trains rolled by, living a half-life of menial labour. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and realised how long it had gotten; almost to his shoulders now. Schuldig probably wouldn't even recognise him.

[Nagi,] he wrote, one the ancient machine warmed up enough to open his email. [I heard something about Schuldig getting married. I know he doesn't know where I am, but I know you kept up with him, and hoped-]

He erased the whole thing. Stared blankly at the screen for a moment. That sort of half-begging, uncertain tone sounded nothing like him.

[Nagi,] he started again. [It's Crawford. How are your studies going?]

The cursor waited at the end of the sentence, blinking at him patiently while he decided what to say.

[If you've kept up with Schuldig, pass his address on to me. I heard he's getting married and want to pass on my condolences.]

He thought for a moment, and then bitterly erased the last word.

[Pass on my congratulations.]

That sounded more like himself. In control, condescending, and dishonest. He sent the email before he had a chance to rethink it, and shut the computer down. This time when he fell into bed, alcohol burning pleasantly in his stomach, sleep claimed him quickly.

He woke with the sun, and a nagging sensation that something was going to change. Soon.


	3. Chapter 3

"There's nothing else to lose. There's nothing else to find. There's nothing in the world that can change my mind. There is nothing else." {Lifehouse – "Hanging By a Moment"}

/

[Part 3]

On a starless night, if you go to the shore somewhere far from the lights of the city and stare out into the horizon, you can't tell where the sky ends and the water begins. There once was a boy who felt like that. In the deafening chaos of his mind, he lost his thoughts, he lost himself, and even lost his own name. Had he not been scooped up off the streets by someone who recognized his potential, he would have ended up dead, or worse. He had been given a chance, he'd been given a purpose, and he'd been given a name - though it wasn't a very good one. Sure, he was guilty of a lot of things. He just didn't regret them.

Brad Crawford was all of the things that Schuldig was not. Calm, logical, intelligent, neat, punctual. At first, Schuldig hated him, and the feeling was likely mutual, because the telepath was something that simply would not, and could not, be controlled. But over the years, as they had drawn blood and shed blood together, Schuldig realized that he actually kind of liked him. He liked to think the feeling was mutual. But just when he was starting to develop an appreciation for the American's quirky sense of humor, just when they had perfected the comedic timing of their meaningless banter, just when he had convinced himself that maybe, and just maybe, that he had a home, and that home had a name, and that name was Crawford, that's when it was over, just like that. Schuldig didn't argue, for once. That was his only regret now.

His relationship with the ocean was complicated. He had almost drowned once. But there was still no place on earth as peaceful as the spot on the horizon where the sky and water meet. His search had thus far had taken him to Japan, the most obvious place to start, which turned up nothing but memories, some of them more pleasant than others. He took a ferry to Korea, because it was cheap, and then took a plane to Dubai, because where else would a shrewd but successful businessman be but there. Except that he wasn't. Then he came to America. To New York, to L.A., and now, here he was, with an overnight layover in Seattle. The only things he knew about Seattle was that it was the home of Starbucks, and that there was the Space Needle. It was from the top of the Space Needle that he saw the ocean, and like a moth to a flame, that's where he was drawn to. The lights from the city were too bright to lose himself in the ambiguous horizon line, but the sky was starless and the pier was quiet, so it would do.

Because the future was not his to see, his theory of how the fabric of time was woven was like this: There are infinite realities, existing simultaneously, where all possible outcomes occur. You're only aware of just one of those realities. That would mean there would be uncountable realities where he was already dead a hundred times over, and it was just as real as him sitting on the pier. That would mean there was a reality where he was getting married to Elise a month from now. That would mean there was a reality where he was still with-. No, maybe not that. He guessed there are some outcomes that are simply not possible.

He stared up at the starless sky in fearful awe of its vastness. Somewhere under this same eternal sky, he imagined, Nagi was happy devoting his life to research, Farfarello was happy devoting his life to God, and Crawford was happy devoting his life to being an insufferable prick. It begged the question, what was he devoting his own life to, and was he happy? For now, he was devoted to finding answers. He was devoted to finding himself, his real self, the self he had left in the hands of a certain clairvoyant who he had expected to be more careful with it. He was going to find him, come hell or high water, but whether it would make him happy or not had yet to be seen. Failing that, he thought, there's still Tibet. Under the eternal sky, he laid down and closed his eyes and listened to the silence, waiting to hear the voice of God.

/

Despite the late night, he was up with the sun. In the shower, he contemplated shaving and decided it was a waste of time. The stubble shadowing his jaw made him look like someone other than himself, and he took a moment to appreciate it. _This_ was a man who wouldn't have let the best things in his life slip away. _Here _was a man who would see what was important before it was gone.

His phone burbled an alarm, letting him know he had approximately ten minutes to get out the door. Mocking, ghostly laughter rang through his head, and for once he couldn't tell if it was a vision or a memory as he contemplated the look on Schuldig's face as the German man realised he was actually running late.

The weather report said sunny and clear, but Crawford's instincts warned him to bring a rain jacket. He tied the mess of hair at the nape of his neck with a rubber band and dressed hurriedly, not bothering to lock the door behind him when he left. In the first place, he would have foreseen any potential trouble, in the second, a locked door was practically an invitation, and in the third, there was truly nothing in the flat worth taking. All of his financial assets were tied up in foreign banks or large tracts of property, including an island off the coast of Hokkaido. He lived in the dark, squalid apartment because he hated living alone in large houses, and saw no reason to waste space. Plus, it was also an effective cover. Regardless of the way things ended, he'd been a vicious businessman and successful assassin for many years before leaving the business and kicking the rest of Schwarz out with him. Enemies might be few and far between, but they still existed.

That thought drew him up short as he realised the feeling of disquiet had never gone away. He slowed to a walk, peering around corners suspiciously. He didn't know if the feeling meant something dangerous was coming, or something un-threatening, but he didn't like the sensation of not knowing exactly what to expect. It made him nervous.

As he passed the pier on the way to the quay, where the ship he was helping to rebuild was lodged, his head suddenly came up like a puppet whose strings had been pulled. He saw only a young woman out for an early morning jog, and a stranger perched on the pier, either dead, sleeping, or contemplating the rapidly lightening sky. Crawford glanced up and saw the clouds were tinted red, a sure sign of coming rain. He clutched his jacket collar around his neck and continued on his way.

Three times, he nearly turned back and stifled the urge to go and find out if the man on the pier was still breathing. He was already late, and unsuccessfully tried to convince himself that he didn't care.

The foreman for the job they were working - a freight liner designed by a rich old eccentric, who wanted to build himself a sort of floating palace to spin out his remaining years in privacy and luxury - was also late, later than Crawford was, and he dodged the bullet of humiliation and being scolded like a child in front of the entire crew.

He went to work with half a mind far away from his assigned task, dwelling on a desolate-looking redhead in a Berlin airport, receding into the distance as Crawford left him at the gate and walked away without looking back.


	4. Chapter 4

"When it all comes crashing down And it's winter all year round And the sky is fire red And the world is Just a shelter underground When there's nothing left to lose And the lost cannot be found I'll find you." { Kerli - "I'll Find You"}

/

[Part 4]

He was woken up not by the voice of God, but by the sound of thunder. Perhaps they are indeed one and the same.

Groggily he looked up at the darkening sky, and then checked his watch - designer, a present from his ex-fiancée. The shock quickly remedied his lingering fatigue, because according to his expensive watch, he was due to check out of the hotel room he never slept in approximately an hour ago, and it would require wings and a miracle to get him to the airport on time. Producing his phone from his pocket and ignoring 6 weeks' worth of ignored blocked call notifications, he phoned the hotel and the airport. Luckily for him, his flight was canceled due to the weather and the kind hotel receptionist allowed him to extend his stay. Unluckily for him, it started to pour down rain in torrents.

He would never know what possessed him when, thoroughly drenched and still far from the hotel, he decided to take refuge in Catholic church. Christ Our Hope, the sign read. There were beautiful, old churches in Germany, some many centuries old. Cathedrals with large stained glass mosaics depicting stories from the Bible, and spires that extend up into the heavens themselves. This church was quite humble in comparison. He would also never know if he was raised Catholic, because memories from when he was a child simply did not have a chance to take root in his mind when it was constantly bombarded with the thoughts of others. It would not surprise him if any parents he might have had had tried to take him to church, maybe to pray the devil out of him. If he had ever learned them to begin with, the rituals and customs of the church had been long forgotten, but the words, "Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned," were somehow ready on his lips.

Schuldig took a seat in the back row. There were a few other parishioners present, lighting candles and reciting rosaries.

/Hail Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners.../

/Let it be operable, let it be operable, God, let it be.../

/Tell me what to do, God. Give me a sign. Show me.../

He doubted there was a God up there listening to their prayers, but he certainly was.

"Can I help you, my son?" A middle-aged, balding, round Italian-American priest interrupted his unholy eavesdropping. "A towel, perhaps?" the priest offered, humbly holding out the towel in his hands.

Schuldig blinked, tuning back into reality, and looked down, noticing a small puddle had formed around him. He accepted the towel with an apologetic smile and began to sop up the water. "Sorry, thank you."

"You're not from around here, are you?" the priest asked, picking up on his accent. "May I ask what you're doing here?"

"No, I'm not from around here. I'm..." He paused. What was he doing, anyway? "I'm looking for something."

"Hmm, I see," the priest said thoughtfully. "Are we talking about a spiritual something, or a physical something?"

"Physical, you might say."

"Have you tried petitioning St. Anthony?"

Schuldig shook his head. "No, I'm sorry, I'm not Catholic."

The priest smiled warmly. "That's alright. St. Anthony helps anyone who asks. If you're looking for a lost object, a lost person, a lost soul... Well, St. Anthony's the go-to guy. It's worth a try. I can teach you how, if you want to."

Schuldig sighed. The priest apparently meant well, and there were probably worse ways he could waste his time than humoring an old man of the cloth. "Alright."

"Do you want the short version, or the long version?"

"Short version, if you don't mind."

The priest nodded and recited the folk charm famous to American Catholics, "St. Anthony, St. Anthony, please come down. Something's lost that can't be found."

Schuldig mumbled it to himself. It seemed simple enough. "Thank you," he said politely, and then folded the towel neatly before handing it back to the priest. "I should be leaving." He stood to go and looked back over his shoulder at the priest. "Thank you again, Father."

"May you find what you're looking for. God be with you, my son."

"You'll be fine," Crawford had said to him five years ago when he abandoned him at a boarding gate at an airport in Berlin. Schuldig meant to turn back and ask him, "why?" Just "why?" But Crawford had already started to walk away, and he kept on walking without even a glance over his shoulder. He had wanted to shout something, to make a scene like they do in the movies, to make him look back and come back and take him back, but his pride would not allow that.

"'St. Anthony, St. Anthony, please come down. Something's lost that can't be found.' Now where's my fucking passport... You've got to be kidding me..."

It was two hours before his rescheduled flight was about to start boarding, and Schuldig's passport was nowhere to be found. And for a non-US citizen, that meant he would be missing his flight if he couldn't find it. He eventually gave up, resigning himself to spending at least one more day in this city while he searched for his passport. If that didn't work, he'd be heading out first thing in the morning to go wait in the local German Consulate branch of Hell's Waiting Room to apply for a replacement. He traced his steps of where he had been since arriving in Seattle, eventually leading him back to the pier. There was no passport there waiting for him, but the sun was starting to set, and there is of course nothing in the world like west coast sunsets.

The sunset was gorgeous, just as it should be. In the distance, he saw the wharf where some workers were just finishing up a hard day of labor. It looking like they were working on a ship, a big fancy one that looked awfully expensive. He felt drawn to wander over and take a gander, but first he'd wait for the sunset to finish. "St. Anthony, St. Anthony..." he found himself reciting under his breathe. As the last bright hues of the watercolor sky started to fade into dusk, he had a feeling that he might find what he was looking for after all.

Weeks of dreams and bad feelings, with nothing concrete to back it up were beginning to take their toll on him. It got so bad that even the men he worked with - insular, irritating clods with barely two brain cells to pass between them, for the most part - were beginning to notice.

"You look like shit today, Moore," said the foreman, taking him aside after the work was done for the day. "We're almost done with this job; are you going to manage it?"

Crawford raked a hand through his disheveled hair. "Of course," he said, feigning a confidence he in no way felt. "I just haven't been sleeping well is all."

The foreman glared at him. "Take a day or two off and sleep," he said finally. "Tired means accidents, and accidents mean delays. Delays cost money. It's cheaper for me to kick you off my dock for a day or two than foot your hospital bill."

Crawford sighed, but it wasn't as though he needed the money. But if the punishing combination of hard labour and heavy drink wasn't letting him sleep, he doubted two days with nothing to do but dwell on things would do much good. He caught a brief mental flash of a pleasant wooden door, but it was nothing useful.

The bell rang, signaling the end of the workday, and his coworkers sloughed off the deck like so much debris, milling around to figure out what to do with their evening. The foreman clapped Crawford on the back and Crawford was startled to realise there was actual concern prompting the command to take a few days to himself.

He wandered slightly behind the milling crowd as they surged towards the streets and their cars or the bars. The sun was just beginning to sink below the horizon, painting the sky a beautiful shade of reddish-purple, with streaks of pink highlighting the clouds. A few faint stars were beginning to peek out into the fading light.

A bird caught the sun and glinted bright white for a moment as it flew overhead, the motion catching Crawford's eye. He traced the arc of its flight as it took off over the city, and his gaze was drawn by an unfamiliar face lurking near the wharf. They'd had a few curious gawkers come to peer at the transformation of the freighter taking place in the quay, but it had gradually tapered off. The visitor was therefore unexpected, and Crawford wondered if he was there to meet one of the workers.

A street-light flickered to life above the waiting man's head, and Crawford sucked in a breath so hard he choked on saliva when it tried to go down his windpipe. The waiting man's hair was flaming red.

Despair, a boon companion since he'd walked away from them all with a last hopeful prayer that they'd fall into better lives than what he could offer them, swelled behind his ribs until his body felt too small to contain it.

/Maybe I'll go find a woman,/ he thought. /Someone blonde and stupid./ Anything to take his mind off his regrets. A quick vision swam to life behind his eyes - a neon-lit sign reading "Ambush" and a dark-eyed blonde woman, petite and simpering over a cherry-red drink in a dim bar. He grunted assent; she was the opposite of what haunted him, and would be a perfect balm to his bruised feelings.

/In my next life,/ he decided, /I'm going to become a monk and join a monastery on the top of a mountain. I'm so over this kind of feeling./

It ruffled him that he could still be so easily affected. Without quite knowing how he knew, his feet set him on the path towards the bar, where a woman who called herself Cherie was waiting for him.


End file.
